EDITORIAL: Much ado about very little

Monday

Sep 24, 2012 at 12:01 AMSep 24, 2012 at 9:34 AM

We have bad news for Democrats. The leaked video of a Q-and-A session between Republi-can presidential candidate Mitt Romney and a roomful of supporters, the one where he says almost half of Ameri-cans are deadbeats, really isn’t that big a deal. A full transcript of the session fills 21 pages and offers few surprises. The video was recorded in May during a fund-raiser in Boca Raton. For the past week, pundits have focused on one section, where Mr. Romney says 47 percent of “the people” are die-hard supporters of President Obama. “All right,” he says, “there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. … And they will vote for this president no matter what. … These are people who pay no income tax.” The statement is disingenuous. We know plenty of Obama supporters who work full-time jobs and pay income taxes. And we know Romney supporters whose sole source of income is a monthly check or two from the government. But so what? The “freeloaders support Obama” line is Republican boilerplate. Letter writers in this newspaper have stated it as fact for the past four years. Columnists and commentators who are shocked simply haven’t been paying attention. Romney backers certainly hoped voters were paying attention when, in response to the video flap, they produced a snippet of film from 1998 in which Barack Obama said he believed in redistributing people’s money. Again: So what? Three and a half years into the Obama presidency, is anyone honestly surprised that Mr. Obama is OK with various redistribution schemes? Yes, he’s a believer. We knew that. In fact, most Americans believe in redistribution, although they don’t usually call it such. Redistributed funds pay the salaries of teachers, postal workers and military personnel. Social Security is a redistributive bureauc-racy. And so on. The election is just over six weeks away. Let’s move on to weightier issues.